In 2008 the Optowave fibre-optic seismic sensor cable was trenched at the StatoilHydro-operated Snorre field with the aim of achieving insight into installation, data acquisition and monitoring procedures. The Snorre pilot demonstrated ‘real time' data transfer and quality control - the fundamental requirement for reservoir monitoring ‘on demand'.

Giants - oil and gas fields with more than 500 million boe in reserves - are no longer a thing of the past. Just before we went to print, BP announced the discovery of possibly 3 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico. That's a giant six times over. A few weeks ago it also became known that Iran has made its largest oil find in five years, according Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari. More than 8.8 billion barrels of crude oil has reportedly been discovered in the Sousangerd oilfield in the Zagros Mountains, in southwestern Iran, almost next to Iraq. In-place gas reserves discovered in the oil field stand at 11 Tcf, also quite impressive.

The Groningen field in the northern Netherlands is the largest gas field in Europe and the tenth largest in the world. Since its discovery in 1959 it has been instrumental in teaching the oil industry how to intelligently exploit such a vast resource.

A significant number of discoveries have been made on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS) for the last two years. Even more important, the trend is towards making bigger finds. Since the merger between Statoil and Norsk Hydro exactly two years ago (October 1, 2007), StatoilHydro's international and Norwegian exploration efforts have proven more new resources than what has been produced.

Hot water from subsurface reservoirs can be used directly to heat our houses. Data, software and knowledge from oil industry operations can help delineate this under-used resource, as is now being done in The Netherlands.

Offshore Norway, exploration activity over the last couple of years has reached record-breaking levels, leading to many discoveries, but few of any size. The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, however, believes that large discoveries can still be made in areas of the shelf that have not been extensively explored.

Electromagnetic surveying is one of the least well understood of the non-seismic exploration techniques. There are various acquisition choices to be made - for example it can be undertaken using both horizontal and vertical transmitters/receivers. To understand the physics it pays off to use an analogy with heat waves.